This wanted to be written. Hope you like it ;)

And Thursday is getting closer and closer and closer…

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AGAIN (IS NOW) – by GoldenNinde

She slept and her mind dreamt. Her face looked clear of thoughts for once, and her body was relaxed, but she never ceased to think, to calculate, to imagine…

He'd been so amused. Smiling like it was nothing, standing there looking confident, taller and stronger and older than she was, and looking dangerous. He scared her at first, but when she sensed that it wasn't danger that he wore like a cloud over his head, it got easier to fake a bravery she didn't feel.

"Are you talking to me?" he'd looked like he was trying not to laugh… but she trusted her classmate's judgement, and concurred with her statement: the boy had been looking at her.

She walked over to him, being 'in control' and 'confronting the problem' so it would go away.

Right, sure.

As her mind posited scenarios (in which she mostly ended up having an extra training session for her black belt karate exam) the irrelevant thought of just how incredibly good looking he was distracted her. Better than any of the boys in her school, even Andy Lister.

Her hand clutched the sheet, her body anticipating this moment: when the sunlight threw his face into sharp relief and every detail could be examined… her closed eyes seemed to squint against the darkness, so that she could see better.

But she'd forgotten. Time and pain had made his features blurry until all she remembered were dark eyes, taking in her appearance. And his voice, telling her she was pretty. He'd stolen the first time she felt pretty.

"Don't call me kid. And you didn't answer my question."

"You are the best looking girl."

And he'd stolen her first beautiful smile, too, although she didn't know this. She only knew that she'd never been lost for words before. Speechless.

In her dream, she was the fifteen year old girl looking up at the boy who would become the object of her fantasies of rescue. He would saved her from strange houses and beds that weren't hers. He would save her from hostile people who wanted money. It didn't matter where, just that he did.

When she'd been cold under the thin blankets of someone else's home which was never hers, she'd wished he was there again, with a passion she hadn't known she was capable of feeling before. Sometimes he climbed in through the window, or maybe banged on the door and demanded she leave with him.

They had met only a month before her parents disappeared, and his memory became like a beacon of hope which took very long to extinguish.

Even though, eventually, it was.

Her eyebrows contracted in a frown, and her grip on the sheet was stronger now, knuckles white and tense as the memories of waiting for him to come swirled around her like leaves caught in a wind. He'd never come. No matter how much her heart had beat faster with every creak in the floorboards, never in fear but in desperate longing… She'd been alone.

Russ had never come either. Russ, the brother who'd left without glancing back.

But Russ was no longer a painful thought. Now Russ brought happy things, even though she'd hated him with a passion she hadn't known she was capable of feeling either.

The faceless boy standing in the street in her dream turned serious, and took a step toward her. As if to remind her he was there and that she shouldn't get lost in thoughts of before.

"That's the reason I was looking at you."

She looked down, then back up at him with her mouth slightly open as if to ask something else, and then… she shouted.

Because his face… his devilish, handsome face was…

"No!"

And with the sound of her own voice, she woke.

"Bones!"

"Booth?"

She heard his voice before she saw the dark figure standing at the foot of her bed, shrouded in darkness. Otherwise things might have ended badly.

"You… you're here? What… what are you doing?" She pulled the sheet over her and let her eyes adjust to the dim light coming through the curtains.

"I'm sorry, I have the key you gave me, remember? Uh, I came to bring coffee and see if you wanted a ride to the site… we've got a case."

"Why didn't you wake me?"

"I was getting to that."

She wanted desperately to ask how long he'd been standing there. But she didn't, because it was forbidden by some rule or guideline of the 'unspoken yet always present' sort.

She thought about him, couldn't help but tear her eyes from him and now… now he'd stolen her memories as well? Because the face of the boy, the one she'd forever remember and yet always forget…

… had been Booth.

This had never happened before; usually the boy didn't have a face, or maybe she did see it but then forgot…

He was slowly taking over. He didn't leave a single aspect of her life untouched. Now he was the idealised prince from her adolescence too. Well, dammit, she shouldn't be surprised. He was everything else, why not this as well?

"Can you leave while I change?"

"Sure, Bones. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you… or creep up on you like that."

"That's okay." She sat up and the sheet slid down to her waist.

His eyes raked over her, and suddenly he scrambled backward until he collided with the wall.

She looked down, but the nightshirt was in place. A little tight, yes, and maybe white could look translucent in certain lighting, but otherwise decent…

"Booth?"

"You know what, Bones?" he panted slightly, and had an arm against the wall as if to steady himself. "You were made to test me, and so far I'm failing."

And with these words he turned and fled, slamming the bedroom door behind him.

After she'd dressed in something proper, she emerged cautiously, hoping the moment had passed and she never had to feel like every particle of air separating their bodies shouldn't be there. Well, never again, anyway.

"Booth?"

He sat on the couch, rubbing his eyes as though he was trying to wake himself up.

"Yeah. Let's go."

As they walked outside and settled into a comfortable argument about why she couldn't drive, her mind churned…

made to test me, and so far I'm failing…

She thought of the boy in her dreams.

"Are you talking to me?"

"Yeah. Please stop looking at me."

"I wasn't."

"Yes you were."

"No I wasn't"

And she thought. She didn't have to think of Booth because if she simply let her mind wander it would invariably think of Booth on it's own.

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah. Let me drive."

"I won't, Bones."

"Yes you will."

"No I won't."

As she sat down in the passenger seat, letting him win (never losing. Temperance Brennan didn't lose), he stole another smile from her. One he didn't see, but that wasn't the point.

Because it didn't matter. Or at least, it mattered and it also made sense, so her frustration at his secure grip on her life was gone.

She smiled because it was, somehow… right, that he was the boy she dreamt about.

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You know you want to. You WANT to push that button and write about your thoughts… or… all right fine, maybe it's ME who really, really wants you to, but please review anyway!

Thursday is SO CLOSE! Aaaaaaaa!